1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink-jet textile printing method and an ink-jet textile printing apparatus, for forming an image by ejecting a textile ink on a cloth. More specifically, the invention relates to an ink-jet textile printing method and an ink-jet textile printing apparatus, which is suitable for a blended yarn fabric of at least two kinds of fibers.
2. Description of the Related Art
As typical conventional textile printing apparatus, apparatus employing roller textile printing method, screen textile printing method have been known. The roller textile printing method is a method to form a continuous pattern by pressing a roller engraved a pattern onto a cloth. The screen textile printing method is a method to directly printing on a cloth and so on by using screen printing plates which are set up gauzes and film plates in screen frames respectively, the number of those screen printing plates corresponds to number of colors and patterns to be overlaid.
In the textile printing apparatus employing such roller textile printing method or the screen textile printing method, a large number of process steps and days are required for preparing the rollers or the screen printing plates. They also require blending of respective colors of inks to be used for printing, operation for registering the roller or the screen printing plates, and so on. Furthermore, the scale of the apparatus is large. According to increasing of number of colors to be used, number of the necessary rollers or screen printing plates are proportionally increased and the scale of the apparatus is further increased, as a result relatively large space for installation require. Furthermore, at every occasion of changing of the image to be printed, the rollers or the screen printing plates are changed. Then, the rollers or the screen printing plates removed from the apparatus has to be stored in view of re-use toward the future. Therefore, storage space for such rollers or screen printing plates becomes necessary.
An ink-jet type printing apparatus has been put into practice as a printing device to be employed in a printer, a copy machine, a facsimile or the like, or as a printer to be used as an output device for composite type electronic apparatus including a computer, wordprocessor and the like or a workstation. Such ink-jet type printing apparatus for textile printing to perform printing by ejecting an ink directly on a cloth have been proposed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 62-57750 (1987) and Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 63-31594 (1988).
An ink-jet textile printing method for a cloth, in which two or more kinds of fibers are blended has been proposed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 7-117223 (1995). In this method, dyeing is performed by preparing ink-jet heads to which textile inks corresponding to respective fibers is supplied. For example, when ink-jet textile printing is to be performed for a blended cloth of cotton and polyester, an ink-jet head supplied a textile ink containing a water-soluble dye, such as direct dye, acid dye or the like having dyeability for cotton, and an ink-jet head supplied a textile ink containing a disperse dye having dyeability for polyester are employed.
When ink-jet textile printing is performed for an unblended cloth, three kinds of ink-jet heads become necessary even if textile inks of three primary colors, i.e., yellow, magenta and cyan, as used in general color printing. In case of the blended cloth, in which two kinds of fibers are mixed, six kinds of ink-jet heads become necessary. When special colors, such as black, green, orange or the like are additionally used, double of six kinds of ink-jet heads corresponding to the textile inks of yellow, magenta, cyan, black, green and orange, namely twelve kinds of ink-jet heads become necessary. Furthermore, in order to prevent color drift which occurs when overlaying order of the inks is reversed in a backward scanning, i.e. for one reciprocal scanning in serial system, further double, i.e. twenty-four kinds of ink-jet heads become necessary.
In the conventional ink-jet textile printing method for the cloth, in which two or more kinds of fibers are blended, it becomes necessary to use textile inks having different physical property depending upon kinds of the fibers. Therefore, quite large number of kinds of ink-jet heads have to be provided. In the ink-jet printing, it has been known that it is effective to provide a recovery mechanism for recovering ejecting condition of the ink-jet head in order to maintain good ejecting condition. The recovery mechanism is provided for each ink-jet head or for every kinds of heads. Including such recovery mechanism of the ink-jet head, the system becomes quite complicate.
In case of a textile ink unstable for heat, such as the textile ink containing disperse dye, and in case of the bubble-jet type ink-jet system which supplies an electric power to a heater facing a liquid passage for heating to eject the ink by bubbling of the ink, stable ejection or printing is difficult. The reason is that there is the tendency such that contaminant may deposit on the surface of the heater by using the textile ink containing disperse dye, thermal denatured substance of the ink may be stagnated in the liquid passage extending from the heater to ejection port, or viscosity of the textile printing ink is increased.